Keyboards are found as computer-related hardware in almost every typical office, place of work, school, library, hospital, and home. Typical users at best take little or no particular care in preventing their keyboards from getting dirty, and at worst consume snacks and groom at their workstations. Thus, food crumbs, human dander, bacteria, environmental dust particles and other debris fall onto the keys and into the spaces between the keys. Where multiple users share a single keyboard, unsanitary conditions arise as multiple people are exposed to debris left by others. Even when the use of a keyboard or keypad such as that of a mobile phone or other electronic device is limited to one user, that user can inadvertently be re-exposed to previous contaminants even after washing their hands if the keyboard or keypad is not cleansed as well.
Generic-use brushes for general cleaning are available, but a typical brush has bristles fixed together in a handle such that the bristles can only move relative to each other by their own deformation. Thus, when a typical wide-area flat cleaning brush is used to scrub a keyboard, keys are likely to be pressed prompting unintended actions by any computer connected to the key board. Even if such computer actions during cleaning are not a concern, the bristles that bear upon the top surfaces of the keys typically prevent other bristles positioned between the keys from reaching into the full depth of the spaces in the keyboard.
Compressed gas canisters are available for blowing dust from keyboards and other surfaces, but such practices at best merely redistribute contaminants and at worst cause dust and debris to become air borne and possibly inhaled. Such canisters also are noisy upon use, and thus would create distractions in work places, schools, and libraries if widely used, and could disturb resting patients in hospitals.
Employers such as hospitals are becoming increasingly aware of the threats that unsanitary keyboards represent to weakened patients through the possibility that bacteria and other infectious biological elements can be transferred from caregivers' hands to patients. Even non-medical employers, out of concern both for the health of their employees and toward the costs of health care and time lost at work, are increasingly considering hygiene-improving measures such as hand sanitizers. Beyond the workplace, parents are increasingly aware that influenza and other bugs are brought into their homes by their children from schoolmates, and that infections can then easily spread to family members of all ages, for example through the shared use of contaminated keyboards. Dry brushing alone is not generally believed to be sufficient to sanitize a surface tainted with infectious contaminants.
Wherever uneven variable geometric surfaces are found, their cleaning and the application of product materials upon them are a challenge for which improved cleaning and applicating devices are needed. For example, items moving along a conveyor belt in an assembly line may require cleaning or the application of a solution or coating.